


we've got no chance of recovery

by slybrunette



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-08
Updated: 2011-06-08
Packaged: 2017-10-20 05:42:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/209378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slybrunette/pseuds/slybrunette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>lexie has come to let these men define her. (originally a five things fic)</p>
            </blockquote>





	we've got no chance of recovery

Lexie holds herself like she’s walking a tightrope, moving with the sway rather than against it, straight-backed along the wall with his body between hers and freedom. Alex's fingers are flexed at his sides, and when he leans forward she meets him, the tilt of her head that’s almost mocking.

“You’re not welcome here, you know,” she says, her big girl clothes on, and time has made her understand that the key to handling him is to put him in his place and never flinch.

She’s got the first part down.

There’s a stray strand of hair that falls out of the messy ponytail that shows all fourteen hours of her day in vivid detail, and his hand doesn’t raise to brush it away. Instead, his eyes follow.

“Try again, _Little Grey_ ,” and there’s no other way to describe his smug smile but cruel.

She flinches and falters and crashes.

There’s nothing romantic about the way he kisses her then and there’s nothing remotely forgiving about her teeth against his lower lip.

 

 

 

 

Some days, she wakes up happy.

She never seems to go to bed that way.

(He never wakes up happy, anymore. He wakes up bitter, bookends his day with coffee and tequila, but at least he goes to bed the same way.

There is something to be said for stability and the avoidance of disappointment when expecting the worst.)

Jackson smiles and curls his arms around her body and she thinks of Alex’s hand high on her thigh, breath hot against her ear, the curve of her jaw, and how she’s far too young to feel quite this old.

 

 

 

 

He’s fucking her sister, mutually assured destruction and all that jazz.

She plucks his shirt from the railing on her way down the stairs one morning, balls it up and throws it at him. Says, “You’re not even trying to hide it, are you?”

“What’s the point?” He spits, and she rolls her eyes.

“She’s cheating,” and she can’t even get the words out without thinking _so what?_. Derek turned into her brother-in-law and moved out all in the span of the same month; there’s nothing sacred about that.

“It’s a fucking piece of paper.”

(And it always is, whether it’s a post it or a marriage license. Something you can tear right through if you aren’t careful.)

He’s defensive. He’s angry and defensive all the time now and so he says these things to her with a voice that edges on hysteria rather than the usual sarcastic, biting remarks, and her eyes would widen, she would hold up her hands and say _jesus, calm down_ but instead he keeps talking, says “what are you jealous or something?” and, well.

He wasn’t expecting that. He wouldn’t have asked it if he was.

She drops her eyes and tells him he can kiss her ass with only half of the fire she intended.

(This thing with Meredith? It’s the final nail in his coffin. It’s the final bridge for him to burn through and it’s killing him, but that’s not the story we’re telling here. That’s not a story that you want to hear.)

 

 

 

 

Her lipstick rubs off the color of merlot on the starched collar of his dress shirt.

The swipe of her thumb only serves to rub it in and then it’s on her fingertips, her hands. There’s some irony to that, the likelihood of being literally caught red handed if she doesn’t make the bathroom her next stop.

“I have to go,” she says, and he doesn’t try to stop her because that thing she’s running the risk of being late to is her own wedding and he just fucked her in a church.

He straightens his tie. It doesn’t suit him at all; he always looks like he’s one breath away from choking.

(Lexie marries Jackson in a June wedding because there were no secret children and best friends turned baby mamas, there were no warning signs that said _get out, get out while you still can_ , and so she forgot to say _i can’t do this_ , forgot to hit the brakes and leave. Because at some point she decided that she loved him like she loved that stuffed bear her father won for her at a carnival when she was four, something comforting and dependable to come home to at the end of the day, and that kind of love was enough for her.

She says _I do_ just a fraction of a second too quickly, and Alex fucks a bridesmaid after the reception.)

 

 

 

Lexie has come to let these men define her.

With Mark she was the child and with Jackson she is the good girl and with Alex she is the whore.

She should flinch at her own word choice; she might be finally past that. They might be finally past pretending to be anything but what they are. Alex is a bad man, who hit rock bottom and lost interest on the climb back up, and she is the kind of woman who kisses men like that in hallways and stairwells and churches, the kind of woman who marries a man who is willfully ignorant to his own detriment because he might really love her that much, and there’s something so tragic and awful about that.

Her mother would be disappointed in her.

Her mother is dead. Her father tried to follow.

So it goes.

(She’s more like Meredith than anyone ever deserved to be, as it turns out.)

“We shouldn’t keep doing this,” she says, hardly for the first time, and there’s still a sheet wrapped around her naked body, still her underwear hooked on her ankle and the bend of his body as he reaches for his shoes, on his way out just as quickly as he came.

The words sound more bored than revelatory; she’s read from this script too often.

He kisses her without using his hands, hers curled into the sheet, and so their mouths are the only place where they touch. It’s clinical, it’s customary. It means nothing, a kiss goodbye when nothing really ever ends.

“I’m late,” she says, when he reaches the door.

She doesn’t mean for a very important date.

 

 

 

 

 _fin._


End file.
